The PVC industry that
releases extremely toxic dioxins when it burns need to stop being an emitter of
greenhouse gases, writes Caspar Henderson

PVC is all around you. At home,
polyvinyl chloride makes everything from shower-curtains to food packaging and
children's toys; at work, it makes vinyl flooring; on the road, car interiors;
in medicine, syringes and bags for transfusions.

But PVC has achieved notoriety as
well as ubiquity. Environmental groups like Greenpeace say the polymer threatens
the environment and human health. Meanwhile, the industry says such concerns are
exaggerated or plain wrong.

Much is at stake. Current annual
worldwide PVC production exceeds 20m tonnes. European production is more than
six million tonnes. In the UK, about 5,000 people are employed in making PVC and
its feedstocks, and about 50,000 in processing and related jobs.

But the debate is about more than
plastic. As with nuclear reprocessing, dumping oil rigs in the ocean or
genetically modifying crops, the PVC industry tries to meet environmental
campaigns with science. But the science is complex and incomplete. Each side is
divided by differing attitudes to risk, doubts about how to manage that risk,
and arguments about the right to pursue certain kinds of technological
development. In other words, the debate is about politics.

And that is an art at which
Greenpeace excels. So far, companies like McDonald's, General Motors, Ford,
IKEA, The Body Shop, Britain's CoOperative Bank, Lego and Nike have either
phased out PVC or pledged to do so. Local authorities in cities across northern
Europe have also adopted PVC-free purchasing policies.

Legislation may be moving against
PVC, too. Within the next few years, the European Commission may issue a
directive imposing strong curbs on the industry. Clearly worried, PVC makers
announced a voluntary code at the end of May that promises continuous
environmental improvement in the manufacture of PVC, with the ultimate goal of
"sustainability".

As part of the legislative
process, the European Commission released four studies in May emphasising the
dangers of disposing of PVC. The amount of PVC waste in the EU is predicted to
double to more than 6m tonnes; per year by 2020, as long-lived products such as
flooring, pipes and window frames, which account for 60 per cent of consumption,
begin to enter the waste stream. The studies concluded that, unless something is
done, PVC recycling levels will not exceed 20 per cent; and that both the
alternative means of disposal, incineration and landfill, threaten the
environment.

"The verdict is clear,"
says Greenpeace's Axel Singhofen. "Landfilling PVC is a ticking time bomb,
incineration creates even more hazardous waste than before, and recycling is not
a solution."

The industry was horrified. It
complained the findings were based on flawed and mistaken interpretation of
industry data.

The study, it said, overestimated
the volumes of waste. The plastic was inert in landfill (the study assumed
misleadingly high temperatures, it claimed); some 90 per cent of incineration
was satisfactory. In addition, there was huge scope for more recycling.

Who is right? The first point is
that using PVC is generally safe. The exceptions are few: some PVC toys contain
phthalates, which are toxic and the subject of an EU directive; some Venetian
blinds leach lead; and vinyl floors may cause childhood asthma, due to phthalate
plasticers. Unlike plastics that do not contain chlorine compounds, PVC releases
hydrochloric acid and dioxins when it burns, and these are extremely toxic.

But making PVC is dangerous, and
so is getting rid of it. Producing the basic feedstock of PVC, vinyl chloride
monomer, creates by-products, including furans and dioxins. Lead, cadmium,
organotins, phthalates and chlorinated paraffins keep PVC stable or make it
supple. In landfills, these can leach out. If PVC is incinerated at low
temperatures, it produces dioxins.

Manufacturers have made big
strides in reducing risks. A study by Britain's National Centre for Business and
Ecology found that PVC was only a minor source of environmental dioxins.
Welcoming the Industry Charter drafted by the European Council of Vinyl
Manufacturers, the NCBE concluded that there was "no evidence that in the
context of society's activity as a whole, the level of harm caused by PVCs is
such as to advocate their immediate withdrawal".

Nevertheless, accidents will
happen. In the UK in March, the emergency services went on full alert after
several tonnes of hydrogen chloride spilled from a storage container at a
European Vinyls Corporation (EVC) plant in Runcorn, Cheshire, a big vinyl
producer formed in 1986 as a joint venture between ICI and Enichem, and spun off
in 1994.

As a rider, the NCBE report
warned against complacency. The manufacturing creates hundreds of tonnes a year
of waste vinyl chloride monomer and ethylene dichloride. Both are toxic.

For the PVC producers even this
went too far. "Industry wasn't party to the initial group established by
Greenpeace and the retailers," complains Roger Mottram of EVC.
"Certain things in the report [such as current industry emission and
control standards] were out of date and inaccurate, because they didn't talk
with us."

A second chance came when an
organisation called the Natural Step tried to build a consensus. The initiative
brought together the Environment Agency for England and Wales, the PVC makers
and Greenpeace. The study asked what it would take for PVC to be sustainable in
the long-term in line with environmental, social and economic goals on which
everyone can agree.

Among the conclusions was that to
be truly sustainable, the PVC industry would need to stop being an emitter of
greenhouse gases. It would need to perfect a "closed-loop" system of
waste management. And it must end the release of organochlorine compounds from
the entire product life.

The industry is broadly happy
with this. It thinks disposal is becoming easier, as recycling PVC into new
products over and over again becomes easier although consumers still have to be
convinced that recycled products are no worse than new ones. In Germany,
recycling is already proving profitable.

Now it was Greenpeace's turn to
object - even though it had been involved in the study. The Natural Step's work
is based on science. It goes out of its way to encourage consensus. But Mark
Strutt of Greenpeace says there is "no way the industry can meet" the
Natural Step's challenges, If we want to ensure the next generation of children
are not exposed to the 300 or more industrial chemicals we all have in our
bodies today, then there are a few materials that we are going to have to live
without.

Instead, Greenpeace proposes
alternative materials. Yet Mark Everard, of the Natural Step, says "history
has seen a number of idiotic substitutions". The UK replaced
organophosphate pesticides with synthetic pyrethroids, but the new chemical has
been found to be as harmful as the old.

"Greenpeace offers
alternatives to PVC without validation of why these are better from a
sustainability point of view," says Jason Leadbitter, of Hydro Polymers,
the European producer, who also took part in the Natural Step's evaluation.
"Some of the alternatives they suggest are much more energy intensive and
also have deleterious environmental effects".